High Wycombe

High Wycombe, often referred to as Wycombe (ˈwɪkəm ), is a market town in Buckinghamshire, England. Lying in the valley of the River Wye surrounded by the Chiltern Hills, it is west-northwest of Charing Cross in London, south-southeast of Aylesbury, southeast of Oxford, northeast of Reading and north of Maidenhead. According to the 2021 United Kingdom census, High Wycombe's built up area has a population of 127,856, making it the largest town in the ceremonial county of Buckinghamshire. The High Wycombe Urban Area, the conurbation of which the town is the largest component, has a population of 140,684. High Wycombe is mostly an unparished area. Part of the urban area constitutes the civil parish of Chepping Wycombe, which had a population of 14,455 according to the 2001 census – this parish represents that part of the ancient parish of Chepping Wycombe which was outside the former municipal borough of Wycombe. There has been a market held in the High Street since at least the Middle Ages. The market is currently held on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday. The town once featured a Roman villa (built 150–170 AD) which has been excavated three times, most recently in 1954. Mosaics and a bathhouse were unearthed at the site on what is now the Rye parkland. The name Wycombe would appear to come from the river Wye and the old English word for a wooded valley, "combe", but according to the Oxford English Dictionary of Place-Names the name, which was first recorded in 799–802 as "Wichama", is more likely to be Old English "wic" and the plural of Old English "ham", and probably means "dwellings"; the name of the river was a late back-formation. Wycombe appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 and was noted for having six mills. The existence of a settlement at High Wycombe was first documented as 'Wicumun' in 970. The parish church was consecrated by Wulfstan, the visiting Bishop of Worcester, in 1086. The town was described as a borough from at least the 1180s, and built its first moot hall in 1226, with a market hall being built later in 1476.